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"Believing Christians should look upon themselves as such a creative minority and ... espouse once again the best of its heritage, thereby being at the service of humankind at large." --Joseph Ratzinger

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In such a Church, where do you look for guidance and support when the wolves are devouring Christ's lambs? What authority is on your side? The general absence of legitimate authority, the absence of clerics ready to stand up for the truth, makes it almost impossible to speak in defense of the orthodox faith. In the words of the Prophet Ezekiel, we have been scattered because there is no shepherd, and when we are scattered we become food for all the wild animals.

It is against this background that I experience the protestations of many Catholics, who are committed to believing that Everything Is Fine in the Church. Somehow their insular context or good fortune has spared them from seeing the massive damage and scandal being done by our clerics. These people do not have to stand before hundreds of children who are already mostly committed to the corruption of the present age, and hear the words of the Supreme Pontiff quoted as evidence against the teachings of Christ. They do not have to hear conversations about how X pastor feels emboldened in his tendencies by Francis's perceived liberalism, or how Y priest is now secure enough under the present Archbishop that he will officiate at the marriage ceremony of two men. And not knowing these things, even committed, it sometimes seems, to remaining oblivious of them, these Catholics turn those of us who cannot help but know them them into the enemies of the Church. We are cranks, unhinged, hysterical, wackos. We are crypto-schismatics. We are to blame for the present sense of chaos. How could we dare to lose faith in the Holy Spirit's protection of the Pope and the Hierarchy! We must affirm! Everything is fine! Really!

How easy it must be to stand by "Everything is Fine", when the life of the Church is an abstraction, and not dozens of real faces one has to see and attempt to guide day after day. How comforting it must be to say "Things have been this bad before!" when the corruption of the times is thought ofgenerally and not with respect to a particular person's spiritual development and eternal destiny, which is being visibly impacted for the worse by the scandalous vagueness of those in authority. With such an easy frame of mind at stake, who can blame these Catholics for defending the comfortable abstraction against the doomsayers and cranks?

Where does that leave us, fellow Christians, Pastors? When the Church is divided between those fighting for heresy and those struggling to pretend that nothing is wrong, where can the faithful find refuge? This is, I believe, the growing crisis of those committed to the ancient faith. What can we do but put our hope in Christ?

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

We must pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out worthy laborers. We must be like Mary and John, who remained with the Body of Christ when everyone else had fallen away. And may God preserve us in Faith, Hope, and Charity unto everlasting life.